Walter+B.+Parke

Dorothy Schultz, age 19, graduated from high school in June of 1929, and was planning to move from her family home in Tomah, Wisconsin to take a government job in Washington, DC. In mid-June, her mother brought her to Dr. W. B. Parke in Camp Douglas for an abortion, performed June 19 for $150. Parke insisted that Dorothy's concerned parents leave her at his home overnight for the abortion. Her parents took her home the next day, but she became ill with chills. After several days they summoned Parke, who boiled some instruments to sterilize them before performing a procedure to clean out Dorothy's uterus. Neither this care, nor continuing care over the next several days, improved her condition, so her parents called in another doctor, Dr. Winter, who found Dorothy delirious with a 105 degree fever. At first she seemed to improve under his care, but she developed pneumonia and died on July 2. Parke expressed his condolences to the family, refunded the abortion fee, and paid them an additional $850. His efforts to convince a jury that he had merely been caring for Dorothy after a self-induced abortion failed, and he was convicted of second-degree manslaughter.

Parke was born around 1872 in Illinois. He relocated to Camp Douglas where he lived with his wife, Cora. He had already been in trouble with the law in 1924, during Prohibition, when he was found to have been over-prescribing alcohol as a medication to "several prominent persons."